First, thank you so much for sharing your playtesting notes from the Priest! Those are super helpful to me, to see what you and other GMs have already tried. It’s a really interesting dilemma, to be sure!
But then this applies to EVERYTHING in the game.
You are not a woman, but can play a PC that is a woman. You are not an elf, but can play a PC that is an elf.
I’m with you and on board for all of this.
You know that in the game there is no “god”, but can play a PC that believes in some god.
I think this one is different, and it’s a little tricky.
In that last quoted sentence, you wrote, “you can play a PC that believes…” (emphasis mine) That is true! At my tables, you have a choice: If you know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, you can decide to play a character that knows that, or you can decide to play a character that does not know that. But you’re always free to play either kind of character, and neither one will break the game. The key for me is the freedom to choose what player knowledge your character shares.
However, FW–just for this one playbook and this one fact about the world–doesn’t allow you to choose what your character knows. This isn’t a big deal, as I said earlier, if this is what you’re going for. But it’s different from the rest of the game, is all.
So, as an example of what I’m thinking of, let’s say we didn’t get to choose other aspects of our character. Like…
- You are not a woman, but you must player a PC that is a woman.
- You are not an elf, but you must play a PC that is an elf.
This seems fine to me, and I imagine it seems fine to many other players as well. None of these statements requires me to separate player and character knowledge. If I know that vampires burn in sunlight, my woman elf character can still know that vampires burn in the sunlight, if I choose to.
But, if you want to play the Priest at least (i.e. a character conflicted by doubt, very appealing to me personally, at least!), FW says, essentially:
- You know that in the game there is no “god”, but you must play a PC that believes in some god.
That requirement that player and character knowledge are separate, is what makes this different. In this case, the player is not free to choose whether their player knowledge (“There are no gods”) is shared by their character–they’re not allowed to share it.
Actually, okay, maybe the Priest could also know that their god doesn’t exist. That’s a kind of a character, right? The person who follows a religion’s teachings, but knows that the god the others of their religion believe in, doesn’t really exist. That’s kind of an interesting character.
But, when I read through the Priest, that’s not the kind of character I think is described by the moves. The Priest “asks [their] deity for counsel and guidance” and “invokes [their] deity’s presence” and “calls upon [their] deity’s wrath,” things like that. The language of the Priest strongly suggests on its own that the character believes their deity exists.
So, the Priest requires that you (the player) know that gods don’t exist, but strongly suggests that your character believe in a deity. For my table (where player knowledge is always free to become character knowledge), this feels very different from the rest of FW, where player and character can freely share knowledge, if the player chooses.
Side note: When I first read the moves of the playbook, I was excited to find a playbook that accurately represented what it’s like to believe in a god you can’t ever know existed–wrestling with belief and doubt, trying to find your deity in signs and portents and prayers, wondering at night if everything you believe is a lie. That was the character I was excited to play.
But, I guess, the type of Priest I was excited about can’t be played in FW as written, using my rule about player-character knowledge, since that Priest can’t share the player’s knowledge (“There are no gods”). The player who plays the believer wracked by doubt, looking for their deity everywhere, is required to have that character not share their player information.
knowing as a Player that your PC has no chance of getting romantic with a certain NPC, but choosing to have your PC try anyway BECAUSE you know that watching them try will make for an interesting story
Maybe this is helpful to clarify the kind of game that I enjoy, but, like, I would never have my PC try something that I know for sure is impossible, just because I want to see my character try, the same way that I wouldn’t try something that I knew was impossible, just to see myself try. I know other people enjoy this sort of separated play, where they’re watching their character separate from themselves, and that’s fine.
This sort of separation of player doesn’t seem necessary in FW–you always seem to have the choice to give player knowledge directly to your character–except in the case of the Priest. Clearly this separation creates more of your desired effect, after all your playtesting! I was just very surprised to see that the separation was necessary for the Priest, when it wasn’t necessary the rest of the game.
when you play FW maybe try first playing it as written.
I may! If I do play it as written the first time, I almost certainly won’t play with the Priest (as tempting as the class is), whether I’m a player or the World.